Friday, June 25, 2010

All along, the discussion in this blog is mainly with respect to psychological health. May be it is time to have a look on our physical health also. It may be very important to have physical health, if we wish to have psychological health.

The life expectancy of human population increased considerably compared to that of few decades ago thanks to the availability and accessibility of medicines and medical systems. Does it translate to more healthier human population? According to my perception it is not. Of course, the better affordability and availability of nutritious food to economically weaker section of population has increased their health considerably and reduced the child death rate enormously – still this section have to do physical activity. For the economically privileged section of population, it may be the opposite due to many factors. In spite of this deteriorating health, the life expectancy has increased just because of the availability of medical systems.

Probably understanding the term ‘Natural Selection’ with respect to evolution may be helpful for this discussion. ‘Natural selection’ is a key term in the process of evolution of living beings in earth. It is the process by which certain heritable traits—those that make it more likely for an organism to survive and successfully reproduce —become more common in a population over successive generations. For more details on natural selection refer the link http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_selection

Human beings are also susceptible to the process of natural selection. Just remember, this process of change happen over hundreds of generation. It can not happen with in few generations. From the time of evolution of human being until few decades ago, physical hardship is essential for survival of human being. Hence the natural selection has to favour for hard physical activities and it is the case. Our body is designed for performing hard physical activities, for our own survival. Now it is no more at least for a so called elite group. If the body designed for physical activity is not performing the function intended, due to the design, the body goes into havoc. But we are capable of holding it in to a survivable structure by means of medicines. If generations of this group do not perform hard physical activity and survive in this earth, the natural selection favour a design change – through gene modification slowly over hundreds of generations. But the chances are that such group may not exist for so long, due to the very nature of design of human body.

The Director’s report section of the annual report of one of the pharma company for the year 200-09 was stated as follows."............ ......... .Tighter controls on pricing envisioned in the new drug policy threaten to reduce margins and impact business. However, factors such as rising prevalence of lifestyle related diseases coupled with improving health awareness and purchasing power, will continue to drive growth in the pharmaceutical market...... ......... ......... ...."

Hence it is an established fact that lifestyle related health disorders are increasing steadily and it is going to be the main growth driver for Pharmaceutical companies in the future. On the other hand, by the name of lifestyle, we degrade our own body and earn profit out of it, by owning the shares of Pharmaceutical companies. What a contradiction in our basic way of living?

It is not that we are just degrading our own body due to our lifestyle, but are encouraging to degrade the body of our children also. It is the height of violence we are executing over the next and future generations. On the contrary we think imposing a little bit control over our children to channel their energy and focus to the possible right direction as violence over them.

Those are in the age group of thirty and above as on now, even though grown up in cities, might have had reasonable physical activities and opportunities to learn life independently during their growing up stage. The life of younger one seems to be real pity. The major part of such population in the middle class and above has absolutely no physical activities. Even if the elite class is having some physical activities, it is just couple of hours on weekly basis. The major part of their time is spent on academics even at the level of primary classes and whatever remaining time available is in front of visual media. The human body had undergone hundreds of thousands of years of ‘natural selection’ not for such a life style. Neither the body can be adjusted by itself for such a life style with in few generations. In such cases, the body can not sustain itself for the period intended for its survival – It has to be supported by medicines. If this is the case, is it not violence the lifestyle we are imposing over our children?

Another alarming fact is the way we are damaging our ears. The ear is designed to sense certain amount of longitudinal vibrations during the life span of body. But the way we are imposing violence on our ear drums by means of ear/head phone for each and every thing over considerable duration in any day, it is inevitable with in couple of decades to become the ear aids as common as eye glasses on today.

We are bombarding our body from every direction by the name of lifestyle. The more alarming fact is that we are encouraging the next generation to bombard their body from every direction on the name of same lifestyle. It is not that there are positive aspects of life style. For sure there are many, many positive aspects. But if we are not aware of these few negative aspects, especially the effect of lifestyle on our body and mind, all these positive aspects are nullified. If the body and mind are not in healthy condition to enjoy the lifestyle change, then what for these lifestyle changes?